How Janey Scholars Scaled Mentorship Program Automation

About the Janey Scholars Program

Janey Scholars is a nonprofit scholarship program serving students from Boston public schools and other underserved backgrounds who go on to attend highly competitive colleges and universities across the country. Beyond financial support, the program is built on a core belief: students thrive when they have consistent, trusted guidance.

The challenge: Managing monthly mentor check-ins at scale

Mentorship is a cornerstone of the Janey Scholars experience. Students are required to connect with their mentor every month, creating consistency, accountability, and a trusted relationship that helps scholars navigate academic, professional, and personal challenges throughout their college journey.

As the program grows, administering and tracking monthly mentor check-ins became increasingly complex:

• Approximately 50 active scholars and a volunteer mentor base — including alumni of the program, retired educators, and community members — required oversight.
• Mentors were responsible for following up with students, tracking check-ins, and reporting back to administrators manually.
• Administrative burden was high, relying heavily on memory and informal communication.
• It was difficult to identify patterns or intervene early when students needed additional support.
• Students weren’t always consistent in reaching out, and mentors spent valuable time chasing check-ins rather than focusing on meaningful relationships.

The team needed a nonprofit mentoring solution that would:

• Reduce manual tracking and follow-up
• Shift ownership of check-ins to the students
• Support mentors without adding work
• Maintain visibility into engagement and student needs

All without losing the personal, human element that makes mentorship impactful.

The solution: Automated mentorship on Graduway

Janey Scholars turned to the mentoring functionality within their Graduway alumni mentorship platform to fundamentally rethink how mentorship was administered.

Because all scholars are already required to register for the platform as part of onboarding, the foundation for this shift was already in place. The program began with mentor-mentee matching within the platform and introducing a milestone-based approach to monthly check-ins.

Key features of automating the mentorship program

• Milestones: Structured, automated reminders for each month of the academic year.
• Student notifications: Outlined exactly what they should discuss with their mentor — academic progress, upcoming deadlines, transcripts, and more.
• Flexible communication: Check-ins completed via text message, email, or directly within the platform.
  

From the beginning, Janey Scholars was intentional about how the platform was used. Every milestone, reminder, and prompt was designed with the students’ best interests in mind — not just to streamline administration, but to help scholars learn how to build and sustain meaningful mentoring relationships.

How Janey Scholars implemented mentor management in Graduway 

Setting up the mentoring program on Graduway was simple, scalable, and designed for immediate impact:

• Onboard all scholars from day one: Students register for the platform during program enrollment, so everyone is ready to engage from the start.
• Match mentors and mentees: Administrators easily pair students with their mentors using the platform’s built-in tools.
• Set up monthly milestones: The team pre-built reminders for the entire academic year, specifying what students should discuss with their mentors each month.
• Automate notifications: Scholars receive timely alerts via text, email, or in-platform notifications — removing the need for manual follow-ups.
• Keep it intentional: Every milestone, reminder, and prompt is designed to support students’ learning and skill-building while reducing administrative burden.

Result: With only a few hours of upfront setup, the mentoring program now runs seamlessly, freeing administrators and mentors to focus on meaningful interactions with students.

Immediate value from a digital mentorship platform

This approach has created immediate impact:

• Students receive guidance on how to engage in a mentoring relationship, even if they’ve never had one before
• Mentors are freed from chasing check-ins and can focus on meaningful conversations
• Administrators gain visibility into engagement without manual tracking
• Milestones reinforce habits that extend beyond college

The outcome: Transforming scholarship program management

By moving mentorship administration into Graduway, Janey Scholars has transformed not only how mentoring is managed, but how students learn to engage in mentoring relationships.

• What once required constant follow-up, mental tracking, and reliance on volunteer reporting is now largely automated — freeing time for high-impact support.
• Initial setup took only a few hours, yet continues to deliver value throughout the academic year.
• Mentors noticed newer scholars are more organized and proactive—a change directly tied to automated reminders and clearer expectations.
• The platform serves as a central hub for communication, engagement, and mentorship, helping Janey Scholars recruit future mentors and strengthen ongoing alumni engagement.

Beyond efficiency, the long-term impact is cultural: Monthly milestones reinforce communication, follow-through, and self-advocacy — skills that extend well beyond college and into professional life.

Looking ahead, the team plans to expand the use of mentoring functionality to automate additional touchpoints, including surveys, exit milestones, and mentor recruitment — continuing to build a program that is both deeply human and operationally sustainable.

Solution spotlight

Gravyty is the AI-powered engagement platform purpose-built for higher education, K-12 schools, and nonprofits. From first engagement to first gift, Gravyty empowers institutions to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized engagement at every step of the student and donor journey. With solutions for 24/7 student support, alumni engagement, fundraising and stewardship, Gravyty helps teams scale their impact, break down silos, and provide always-on support without burning out staff.

Graduway enables higher education institutions to connect with their alumni seamlessly through automated outreach, career networking, and digital engagement tools. By integrating with existing systems, Graduway provides organizations like the Janey Scholars Program with a single platform to monitor mentoring relationships, alumni interactions, and engagement levels.